The great Aperture to Lightroom migration continues! I think I’m about ¾ of the way through, as I’m being quite careful in weeding out duplicates and other images that I have no interest in keeping. Bearing in mind there are pictures going back to 2002 there’s been quite a lot of fine-toothed-comb scrutiny! I’m also glad that I’ve maintained my Aperture picture library during the process, as I’ve made a few errors that I’ve been able to rapidly put right – I ensure that my images exist in at least 3 places so I can avert disaster! I think another week or so and I’ll be able to delete the Aperture library and free up some much-needed disk space; the last few hundred images are mostly personal bits and bobs that don’t really deserve their own collection or folder, so they may well get swept up in some broadly-themed general folders.
I have however begun to use Lightroom’s editing capabilities and I’m really impressed so far, there seems to be some really useful tools that just don’t exist in Aperture (at least not natively) – I especially like the lens profile corrections, and in particular being able to rapidly get rid of chromatic aberrations – purple fringing that occurs around high contrast areas. This was supposedly easy in Aperture, but I never really got it to work, certainly not as easy as the Lightroom method, and the PTLens plug-in wasn’t really great as you had to export as a TIFF or PSD and then re-import to Aperture, so you’re not working with the original RAW file. Now I'm always working the original image, maintaining as much detail as possible.
Those repeat visitors amongst you will have noticed yet another website re-design. I really liked the last template on the whole, but I wasn’t a fan of how the galleries were presented – you couldn’t click on each image for an enlarged view. So, I had a trawl of the other templates on offer, and chose this new one, and I’m much happier with the galleries. I’ve also taken the time to include direct links to the client galleries, so clients don’t have to remember the exact URL to find their pictures – the galleries are still password protected, so only those who have the password can get access to those memories. As with all my packages, these galleries will remain on-line and accessible for a year after the event, and I always archive my assignment images for indefinite storage offline in case the worst should happen!
On a personal note, the family and I had a great day out at the Cotswold wildlife park near Burford over the bank holiday weekend – you may have seen my new image ‘Sergei’ in the ‘Nature’ gallery. I got a some great shots, including another Meerkat – perhaps this is Oleg?
